You don’t need to have read Kafka to know what “Kafkaesque” means — the idea that the world is a nightmare, a sick joke at your expense, continues to resonate a century after the writer died. Franz Kafka’s “uneasy dreams” have inspired filmmakers like Orson Welles, David Lynch, Michael Haneke, Terry Gilliam, and Roman Polanski, to name just a few, and now Agnieszka Holland has taken the bull by the horns and delivered a biopic that’s Kafkaesque and then some.
Holland blends scenes from Kafka’s life as a German Jew in Austro-Hungarian Prague with dramatizations his short stories and — at the film’s most surreal — documentary footage of Kafka’s present-day tourist economy (“Who will join me for a Kafka burger?”). Franz is densely layered but lively, and Holland hits the jackpot with newcomer Idan Weiss, whose tragicomic presence suggests a persecuted clown somewhere between Charlie Chaplin and Adrien Brody.
Oscar Submission: Poland
Supported by
Media Partner
Idan Weiss, Jenovéfa Boková, Peter Kurth, Ivan Trojan, Sandra Korzeniak, Katharina Stark
Czech Republic/Germany/
Poland
2025
In German and Czech with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Credits & Director
Executive Producer
Mike Downey, Kevan Van Thompson, Daniel Bergmann, Jeff Field, Emir Külal Haznevi
Producer
Agnieszka Holland, Šárka Cimbalová, Uwe Schott, Jorgo Narjes, Marcin Wierzchoslawski, Alicja Jagodzinska
Screenwriter
Marek Epstein
Cinematography
Tomasz Naumiuk
Editor
Pavel Hrdlicka
Production Design
Henrich Boráros
Original Music
Mary Komasa, Antoni Komasa Lazarkiewicz
Agnieszka Holland
Agnieszka Holland began her film career as an assistant director to Krzysztof Zanussi and Andrzej Wajda as her mentor. Her first feature film, Provincial Actors (1978), was one of the flagship pictures of the “cinema of moral disquiet” and winner of the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980. She is a three-time Academy Award nominee for her films Angry Harvest (1985) and In Darkness (2011), both nominated for Best Foreign-Language Film, and Europa Europa (1990), which was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Holland has also directed numerous episodes of notable TV series.
Filmography: In Darkness (2011); Spoor (2017); Mr. Jones (2019); Charlatan (2020); Green Border (2023)
Photo by Marlene Film Production
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
Agatha's Almanac
Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other
This intimate and candid film by a younger husband and wife artist team is a delicate and immensely moving dual portrait of two artists, husband and wife, together and apart, at that point in life when the end casts a shadow over even the sunniest day.
Image: © Manon et Jacob and Final Cut For Real
